


This World and the Next

by Catchclaw



Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: Angst, Established Relationship, Feelings Realization, First Time, Ghosts, M/M, Mutual Pining, Scent Marking, Schmoop, Smitten Geralt Is So Smitten, Soft Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, The Inevitability of Loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-11
Updated: 2020-02-11
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:21:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22663927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catchclaw/pseuds/Catchclaw
Summary: They heard tale of the ghost for a month before Geralt took it seriously, but Jaskier, true to form, was enchanted by the idea from the start.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 38
Kudos: 695





	This World and the Next

**Author's Note:**

> Cheers to Crowgirl for her excellent beta and those key notes that said, in essence: _Fix it_.

They heard tale of the ghost for a month before Geralt took it seriously, but Jaskier, true to form, was enchanted by the idea from the start.

“A _ghost_?” he said with as much unabashed glee the third time someone told them the story as he had the first. “As in a spirit of the dead who wanders lonely about the earth?”

“Er.” The councilman’s eyes flicked from Geralt’s face to the bard’s and back. “As in an unholy spectre that devours people’s souls and leads them to a gruesome death, yes.”

Jaskier’s smile only grew brighter. “Ah, gods! How marvellous!”

“Generally,” Geralt said later as he sat in the corner unlacing his boots, “it’s considered poor form to cheer for the monster.”

“Pffft.” Jaskier shrugged out of his doublet. “I wasn’t cheering, I was merely expressing appreciation for its otherworldly virtues, shall we say.”

“It killed that man’s brother.”

“Did it?” Jaskier’s face fell. “Ah. I missed that.”

Geralt set his boots aside and stood up, reaching for the hem of his shirt. “Of course you did. You were too busy being an ass.”

He felt two warm, slim hands on his chest, claiming their territory even before his shirt hit the ground. “I’ll apologize to him in the morning,” Jaskier said, and oh, his eyes were just as soft and sharp as they always were when there was a door to close and more than one candle to be lit. “I’ll seek him out after breakfast and say something beautiful about his dear, departed loved one.”

“You’ll do no such thing.” The words came out with no sting--how could they when Jaskier’s thumbs had found his nipples, when his own hands were grounded in the dusty silk of Jaskier’s hair? “We’ll ride out in the morning and kill the fucking thing and then come back and take the councilman’s coin. That’ll be apology enough.”

“Hmm. Can I apologize to you, then?”

“For what?”

“Mmm.” Jaskier’s mouth dipped smiling to relieve his thumbs of their task. “For being an ass.”

A hot, soft sound fell from Geralt’s lips; he made no move to stop it. “Somehow,” he murmured, “I think it’ll take you more than one night to make up for a lifetime of that.”

Teeth on him now, quick and perfect. “A lifetime? Oh, you wound me, witcher.”

“Do I? Well.” He slid his fingers between their bodies and found what he sought, squeezed, reveled in Jaskier’s gasp. “Let me offer you an apology, then.”

And so the evening unwound as it so often did, now: with Geralt on his knees beside a borrowed bed, the bard rose-petal steel in his mouth, Geralt’s own pleasure and desire mirrored in Jaskier’s lovely, flushed face as his hips began to rabbit and chase.

“Fuck,” he huffed, his grip going slack in Geralt’s hair, his ass trembling in the curve of Geralt’s palms. “Fuck, love. You’re so good at that. Don’t stop. Ah, gods, don’t you dare fucking stop!”

When he came, he was cream in Geralt’s throat, sweet and bitter all the way down, the sound he made a fragile flame that licked at the tips of Geralt’s ears and scorched the drum of his heart and only then did Geralt let himself know how hard he was, how badly he wanted, and he could barely free himself fast enough, after that.

He stumbled to his feet and clutched at Jaskier’s neck and nudged himself against the slack bow of Jaskier’s mouth and Jaskier--beautiful, impossible Jaskier--did what he always did: he grinned and he let Geralt in.

The bard had always done that, even before they’d fallen into bed together and found, somewhat to Geralt’s surprise, how well suited they were to each other in that way--Jaskier had always opened himself to Geralt, shown what he thought or felt or hated without hesitation, and Geralt had admired him for it, quietly, until the night when the man’s inconvenient candor proved contagious.  
  


****

  
“There’s something I don’t think you understand,” Jaskier had said to him a few months ago as they glared at each other over the last of the night’s cooking fire. “Something that’s apparently impossible to drive through your stone-thick head. You can act like the biggest damned ass in the Realms, Geralt--and you do, on the daily--but you’re not going to chase me away.”

“I’m not trying to chase you away,” Geralt had snarled, hurling rabbit bones at the fire. “I’m trying to get you to shut up.”

“Oh, really? Is that why you’ve been cursing in my general direction all day? Because you want me to stay with you, me, the eternal target of your abuse? Me, the one who slows you down, who’s shit at stabbing monsters, who refuses to let you travel in peace? That’s the person whose company you’d like to keep?”

“Yes!”

The bark in his voice had surprised him. Jaskier hadn’t even flinched. Indeed, he’d looked suspiciously triumphant.

“Well,” Jaskier said, “you’re damned lucky to have me, that’s all I’ll say. Anyone with any sense would have run screaming ages ago.”

“I _know_.” The words had been thick in his throat. “Fuck, I know.”

Jaskier had leaned back, his expression nonchalant, but his scent shifting. He no longer wore the breeze, as he so often did now, or the flowers, as he had in his youth; no, his smell was thicker, sweeter, sharper--like silvered honey, he was, as he stared coolly at Geralt through the flames.

“If you want me to leave you alone, Geralt, all you have to do is ask.” He tilted his head a little. The moonlight caught the curve of his neck. “I’d thought maybe you’d forgotten that.”

“Horseshit,” Geralt growled. Something in him was stirring, something he wanted very much to ignore; he tried to bark over it. “I’ve told you to fuck off a hundred times. Doesn’t seem to have done any good.”

“Mmmm, true, but you let me stay anyway, didn’t you? And you’ve not left me in your proverbial dust, either, when we’re both keenly aware that you could; one swat of the old Roach or one tiptoe as I slumbered and I’d be hard-pressed to catch your path again. But you haven’t done that. Why is that, do you think?”

Geralt had not been thinking. He rarely did when it came to Jaskier. Jaskier simply _was_ , like the sky and the storms and the trees, a material feature of his existence that was so fundamental, only its absence was remarkable. But unlike the sky, even at its most beautiful, Jaskier was impossible to ignore. There had been a time, early in their acquaintance, when the sight of him ambling along at Roach’s side had been an irritant, an unwelcome reminder of Geralt’s lost solitude. Now, nearly a decade later, as the bard had drifted in and out of his life--as he’d come to know life without Jaskier just as keenly as he knew life with him--it was solitude he found trying, the endless silent rush of the road. Towns were better, but only just; when Jaskier wasn’t with him, he found himself melancholy when he sat in taverns alone.

They had only been together this time for, what, three days? Four? And yet already Geralt had found himself dreading the bard’s inevitable departure for nicer climes and better company and so he’d been a boar: snapping when the pitch of Jaskier’s song displeased him, when Jaskier talked too much, when Jaskier lollygagged behind the horse where Geralt couldn’t see him and Geralt had had to cling to the saddle horn with irritation to stop himself from turning his head. And on that night of all nights, Jaskier was calling him on it, and it wasn’t helping, not at fucking all; it was only making the clawing feeling in Geralt’s gut worse.

So, too, was the sight of Jaskier’s fingers as they plucked off his popinjay doublet and shook it and set it aside in the dark, and ah, fuck, the scent of him, then--that’s what had let the clawed thing break loose: the way Jaskier smelled, like all the years remembered, like cedar and oak and anise; the way it had risen from his chest with every breath and mixed with Geralt’s own sweat. And Jaskier was looking at Geralt, too, cornflowers fixed on his face, lovely and unyielding.

 _You’re not going to chase me away_ , Jaskier’s eyes said. They both knew that.

But it wasn’t quite the same, was it, as it would be to ask Jaskier to stay.

“Geralt?”

He blinked. “Hmm?”

Jaskier leaned towards the fire, towards Geralt, the light catching the dark tangle of hair on his chest that peeped above his undershirt. “Have I lost you?”

Geralt extended his hand, steadied it. The world seemed to go very quiet. He said: “No, Jas. Not yet.”

The light in Jaskier’s eyes; the firm close of his fingers in Geralt’s. The soft, ardent stroke of his tongue. Each perfect, each not enough, each earned.

They had coupled like newly-sworn at first, frantic and loud, Jaskier’s teeth on Geralt’s shoulder and his nails clawing lines down Geralt’s back. He wanted so badly, Geralt’s bard, and he took it so goddamn well that it seemed entirely reasonable in Geralt’s mind simply to never stop.

But when the first fire was over and only the moonlight remained, Jaskier had pushed Geralt on his back and nuzzled him, licked him, kissed him everywhere he could reach: his scarred sides got the same attention as his battered shins, the back of his knees. His nipples. His balls. The soft inside of his thighs.

And when Jaskier had taken Geralt in, the way smoothed by more lavender-scented oil, it had been slowly, at his own leisure, his palms flat on Geralt’s chest and his head tipped back, that silver honey scent of him sinking into Geralt’s skin and burying itself in his bones and Jaskier had ridden him forever, or so it had seemed; slow and certain as the forest slumbered around them, the stars smirking down and whispering foolish things to Geralt about the impossible, about forever and love. 

The next morning, he’d taken Jaskier again while the sky was still gray, Jaskier all at once awake and tight and gasping, his seed spilling over Geralt’s fist, and when the cliff had drawn too near he’d pulled himself free before his thoughts shattered and flipped the bard over and shot himself all over that dark, matted chest.

“Fuck, Geralt,” Jaskier had said, his eyes bright and his grin like a river. “There’s no need to mark your territory. I’m not going anywhere. I thought we’d established that.”

Geralt had tumbled then, tucked his hands on either side of Jaskier’s head and leaned his face against one fevered cheek. “No need, perhaps,” he said softly, as if the stars might hear, “except that I wanted to see myself on you.”

A long, slow stroke of his back. “And smell, too, yes? In case you need to be reminded. You can just draw a breath and know that I’m near.” 

_Yes_ , Geralt had thought but had not said. Not said, but turned his head and opened his mouth and kissed Jaskier into the earth, the dew warm and heavy on his back. _Yes. Yes_.  
  


****

  
And so that instinct came again in that tavern room as wire-strong fingers clutched the tops of his thighs, as Jaskier hummed a greedy ardent song and pulled the pleasure from Geralt with that lovely tongue and in the moment before he broke, Geralt cupped the back of Jaskier’s neck as a vise and yanked himself out and loosed himself over Jaskier’s parted lips, his chin, the edges of his damp, knotted hair.

“Oh, gods.” Jaskier made a hot, soft sound and stared up at him, nails biting into the swell of Geralt’s ass, white heat plain on his cheeks. “Goddess, yes, Geralt. _Fuck._ ”

Another bolt, a last. It took his breath. He fell again to his knees. Sighed when Jaskier kissed him through warm bitter seed and reminded him how to breathe.

 _Yes_ , he thought as Jaskier’s hands combed through his hair, the scent of their spend twining in the air around them soothing, smoothing, comforting him as they kissed. _Yes. Yes_.

“So,” Jaskier said later, his face clean and the candles out and the two of them tangled in bed. “A ghost tomorrow, then? How exciting! I’ve never met one of those.”

“Don’t get your hopes up,” Geralt grunted. “Ghosts are easy to blame and much harder to find.”

“Yes, but the councilman said--”

“For all we know, the councilman murdered his brother and is desperate to eschew the blame. And what better thing to blame it on than a creature no one can see?”

Jaskier kissed his chin, chuckling. “Your cynicism, my love. How it's rolled through the years unabated.”

Geralt tipped his head back and Jaskier took the hint, tucked the next kiss to his neck. “On the other hand,” Geralt hummed, “it could be a ghost. I acknowledge that possibility.”

Jaskier nipped him. “Magnanimous of you.”

“I try.”

“Anyway,” Jaskier said, turning his knee over Geralt’s, “I’ll make a wonderful ghost someday, don’t you think?”

A stone fist closed around Geralt’s heart. The room suddenly seemed very cold. “Don’t say that.”

“Pfft. Why not?”

 _Because,_ Geralt thought and could not say, _if you leave me, I’ll die. Except the horrible thing is, I won’t. The world will scream with your absence and I will live on in your silence. I’ll be alone long after you’re dead_.

He closed his eyes and breathed in Jaskier’s scent, slow and deep, and told his heart to shut the fuck up.

“You could hardly be a ghost, Jas," he said. "You’re far too fucking loud. Ghosts don’t generally announce their presence; they tend to favor subtlety and mystery. You’d hate that. You’d want to haunt people all the fucking time.”

Jaskier’s nose bumped his ear. A palm slid clever up his chest. “Not people, Geralt. Just you.”

Ah, gods. “Just me, eh?”

Jaskier’s lips brushed over his, teasing. “You’ll never chase me off, I said,” the bard murmured. “Have you forgotten that?”

Their mouths met and then Geralt did not have to think; there was no room to, not with Jaskier so close to him, whispering soft filthy things against his lips and rocking against his thigh.

“Not like that,” he sighed when Geralt’s fist found his shaft. “Inside me. Please. I want to feel everything, all of you. Please.”

So he pressed Jaskier into the sheets and spread the bard wide with blunt fingers and spit, the hot shove of his tongue, and then raised Jaskier’s hips and leaned down to kiss him through that first, aching push, murmured: “Come on, my love. Let me in.”

Jaskier knotted his long legs around Geralt’s waist and his arms around Geralt’s neck and there was nowhere to go but up and up and up as speech fled and there was only the sound of their bodies, of their breathing, their perfect, mingled scent, a scent that took the air from Geralt’s lungs as Jaskier came joyful and loud and grew unbearably tight and then the forever eyes of the stars were in his again, on him, and there was only pleasure and the high crest of desire and the pain in his heart that was love.

With love, the only certainty was the knowledge of loss. Not today, not tomorrow. But it would come.

With love, the only promise was that of ghosts; of a day in his life when even this, the fever of Jaskier’s body around him, the soft slide of the bard’s kisses, would be only a spectre, a dream, of how his life used to be.

With love, the only thing Geralt knew for sure was that he would lose it. It would have been easier, better, then, to push Jaskier away.

But he didn’t. Not that night, or any that came after. So long as Jaskier walked the Realms--and even after, perhaps--it would be at Geralt’s side that he stayed.

They lay in razed sheets, after, and the world seemed still. And Geralt held Jaskier in his arms and thought: _Yes_. The word was a comfort now; a kind of binding between himself and the stars and himself, between this world and the next. _Yes, this. You. For as long as I can have you with me, as long as you'll have me. You._

“I would make a marvellous spectre,” Jaskier murmured sleepily, leaning back against Geralt’s chest. “Admit it. I’d be the sort of ghost that someone wrote songs about.”

“Songs?” Geralt said, nosing at the tousled nest of Jaskier’s hair, hiding his smile there. “No, they’d write whole cycles about you, love. The kind that would take your successors a full day to sing to a eager crowds, the kind with a long and silly title like _The Triumph of Master Dandelion in This World and The Next._ ”

“Hmmm.” Jaskier’s mouth found Geralt’s jaw, dreamily. “I like that.”


End file.
